Deny Tax, Donate

We did it.

We gave our November salary to charity as a protest against government greed, corruption and mismanagement. The charge sheet against the government grew as the month went on, and following their reaction to the tragedy where 27 people died trying to cross the Channel (look at the appalling slant the BBC put on that story!!), I added “inhumanity”, and included the RNLI as one of the charities. Following the way in which the health secretary, Sajid Javid, addressed a practising doctor, Rosena Allin-Khan in the Commons, which in turn was an echo of Matt Hancock’s distasteful tone, it’s safe to add “misogynist” as well.

Anyway, here’s a table of the donations that were made.

The donations represent the priorities we believe the government ought to have on education, health, social care and foreign aid.

If you would like to protest in a similar way, feel free to get in touch – there’s a contact form, or you can email or reach out via Twitter or Instagram. The aim is NOT particularly that anybody has to give away all of their income, or that you should support the charities that we have – though I am sure they’d be happy to receive your support. Use a donation to the charities that matter to you to make the point that the government does not share your values, and that you trust the charity more than the government to spend your tax wisely.

Thank you for your interest in our protest.

The amount of tax that we will be denying the government by giving our November salary to charity will be £1642.98. This is the money that charities will be able to decide how to use instead of the government.

#DenyTaxDonate

That means that TOMORROW is when Joel and I will be giving our salaries to charities, in protest against government greed, corruption and mismanagement. I’m going to add inhumanity to that – I’ll also be making a donation to RNLI following the deaths in the Channel last week.

Giving money away is a good thing to do if and when you can afford to, without fanfare. Indeed, we all know that some of the most generous people are those who, in human terms, can least afford it. Neither Joel nor I are good at the “attention seeking” thing, and on one level, drawing attention to what we are doing has made me squirm. But I wanted the focus to be not on what we are giving, but on the fact that by doing this, we are in effect deliberately withholding our tax from the government.

“But tax is a good thing!”

Yes, if used wisely. Too much of the time, though, this government is not doing that. Even if it is not the case for many MPs, even many Conservative MPs, the actual government seems to have no higher values than increasing personal wealth and power for themselves and their friends, with indifference to the needs of the most vulnerable in society. Whilst it was happy to remove the “temporary” £20 per week uplift in Universal Credit, its own MPs are claiming expenses to rent properties in London whilst letting out properties there which they already own. The Paterson affair showed that they were more than happy to turn a blind eye to MPs representing businesses. The focus of government expenditure was not on securing value for money, but on getting public money into the hands of friends and donors. The government spent up to £37bn on the “NHS” Test and Trace scheme. The British Medical Journal was pointing out its failures a year ago. The government’s own Public Accounts committee in March pointed out that it had failed in its central goal. Why the scare quotes on “NHS”? Because it was nothing to do with what people would understand the NHS to be! As recently as late November, consultants were still being paid over £1m a day on an average of £1100 per day.

It goes without saying that very few people working in the NHS are paid at that daily rate! NHS workers, along with most public sector employees (but not MPs!) have generally had their pay frozen for most of the last decade. The cost of a lot of the pay rises that the government was not willing to pay nurses and other NHS staff could be covered if the government had different priorities.

So we regard this protest as in effect massively increasing our tax rate to ensure that the charities, who we trust more than the government, get to decide how the money should be used.

Our protest is also to show that there’s a different way – generosity. We have no direct affiliation with it, but if you would like a better vision for society, I’d recommend Tom King’s work on the Generous Society.

Thank you for your patience with all the #denytaxdonate spam. It’s nearly over!!

Our DENY TAX, DONATE protest is still moving forward. I have sorted out some of the administration process this week

Some of the charities to which we will be giving money effectively have “payment portals” on their website, which makes it easy – their bank details are there, you fill in the Gift Aid declaration online, and that’s it.

Others aren’t really expecting donations to come from random people, or have not otherwise allocated the infrastructure to run donations through their websites. So I’ve been in touch with them, and asked them to send bank details and Gift Aid forms. I have several printed out at home – we’ll need to fill them in and return them.

If you’ve never filled in a Gift Aid form before, they are very simple – you fill in your name and address, and tick a box that you have paid enough tax for the charity to claim back. You date it (so it can apply to any donations after that date, unless you cancel it). That’s it – the charity is then able to increase the size of the donation you made by 25% by getting in touch with the government to reclaim the basic rate income tax you paid. If you were a higher rate tax payer, the fact that you made a charitable donation will also reduce your own tax liability when you come to do a tax return.

Here’s a press release about the DENY TAX, DONATE protest:

It can be accessed directly here.

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